COVID-19 Safety Plan

Safety Plan and contact tracing at Level 2

At Alert Level 2, you are required to have a Safety Plan in place and discuss this plan with your employees before they return to work so they understand the measures that are being taken to protect them and your customers. You can find the WorkSafe template for the Level 2 Safety Plan here.

Contact tracing is a requirement in your Safety Plan during Alert Level 2 if you are a cafe, bar or restaurant. For retail stores contact tracing is encouraged but not mandatory. However, if you are contact tracing, you must also ensure a 2 metre distance is still maintained between customers inside and outside your premise. In some cases, this will mean you must limit the number of customers in your store at a time.

Accurate contact tracing must record the details of all people, both workers, visitors, entering or leaving the workplace as well as all people that workers have contact with while conducting their work, including customers where this is practicable. The details you record (at a minimum) are:

date of contact (and time if practicable)

full name (not nickname)

contact telephone number

physical address.

You can find out more about managing health and safety in a retail environment on the WorkSafe website.

Preparing your plan to operate safely

Under Alert Level 2 all businesses need to have a COVID-19 safety plan that sets out how they'll operate safely. The key controls that have been decided as necessary to minimise the risk of passing on the COVID-19 virus at work are:

supporting people with flu-like symptoms to self-isolate

ensuring separation distances of at least 2 metres

disinfecting surfaces

maintaining good hand hygiene and good cough/sneeze etiquette

keeping records to facilitate contact tracing.

The purpose of a safety plan is to ensure effective implementation of COVID-19 controls, and to ensure the health and safety of workers and other people isn't put at risk.

Before you resume work, you must develop a plan for working safely. You also need to discuss and share the plan with everyone at work - including workers, contractors, and suppliers - before the work starts. You should review and update your plan regularly.

What should your plan include?

To ensure you are minimising the risk of COVID-19 appropriately, and that your business can continue to operate safely at Alert Level 2, you need to consider the following questions and incorporate that into your safety plan.

Are there any risks arising from opening your premises to customers, and how will you manage these?

How will you ensure all employees know how, and are able to, keep themselves safe from exposure to COVID-19?

How will you gather information on the wellness of your employees to ensure that they are safe and well to work?

How will you operate your business in a way that keeps employees, suppliers and customers safe from exposure to COVID-19?

How will you manage an exposure or suspected exposure to COVID-19?

How will you evaluate, and continuously review, whether your work processes or risk controls are effective?

How do any changes impact on the risks of the work you do?

You must work together with your employees to develop answers to these questions and share the plan with everyone in your business. This will ensure that your employees understand how you intend to manage the risks of COVID-19 safely as you resume business activity. We recommend using a template created by WorkSafe as a place to start your safety plan.